Why Patriotism and Anti-Racism Can’t Co-Exist

Patriotism asks you to love something that was never built for everyone.

It asks you to overlook the harm in its foundation,

to drape yourself in the illusion that the system just needs a little fixing

not a reckoning.

Anti-racism asks for the opposite.

It asks for truth.

It asks for dismantling.

It asks for sitting with the discomfort that this country was built on stolen land and stolen lives

and that the same systems still feed off that history today.

You can’t hold pride and accountability in the same hand.

Not when pride demands silence.

Not when “love for country” means ignoring who that love excludes.

As James Baldwin said,

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

That kind of love isn’t blind—it’s raw, demanding, and unafraid to name the harm.

Patriotism wants you to celebrate the myth.

Anti-racism forces you to confront the machinery that made the myth possible.

One says, we’re better than this.

The other says, this is exactly who we’ve been.

You can’t pledge allegiance to the flag

and claim to be fighting the structures that flag protects.

You can’t sing about freedom

while some people are still begging to be seen as human.

As Ijeoma Oluo wrote,

“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself.”

That commitment doesn’t fit neatly inside patriotic pride.

Because patriotism asks you to protect the image,

while anti-racism asks you to face the truth.

Patriotism comforts.

Anti-racism disrupts.

Patriotism says be proud.

Anti-racism says be honest.

And honesty costs comfort.

I think people cling to patriotism because it’s easier to romanticize a country

than to face how many bodies built it.

But pretending the rot is history doesn’t stop the roots from spreading.

A wound doesn’t heal just because you call it progress.

It heals when you stop defending the thing that keeps reopening it.

As Angela Davis reminds us,

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

I say this as someone who benefits from the very systems I critique.

Privilege has a way of whispering, you’re not part of the problem,

when in truth, silence is one of its strongest allies.

Naming that doesn’t undo harm,

but it’s a start toward not repeating it.

If we’re serious about dismantling racism,

we can’t keep trying to fit it neatly into patriotic ideals.

We can’t keep painting “freedom” over the same walls that keep people out.

So maybe this is less about hating a country

and more about loving humanity enough

to stop defending the harm that built it.

If that makes people uncomfortable,

then maybe discomfort is where we begin.

Author’s Note

This piece isn’t written from a pedestal.

It’s written from reflection

and from a deep awareness that I am still unlearning, still listening.

I owe my understanding of these truths to the Black, Brown, and Indigenous voices

who’ve carried truth through generations.

Who have carried the weight of this country’s contradictions for generations.

If you’ve made it this far,

I hope you pause before reacting.

Ask yourself where your loyalty lives:

in the myth, or in the truth.

Healing won’t come from silence.

It begins when we stop protecting comfort

and start protecting people.